He’s running hard to topple Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary, but Barack Obama says he would hire her “talented” l husband “in a second” if he won the White House, according to Time magazine.
In an interview that hits newsstands tomorrow, the Illinois underdog – asked whether he would hire Bill Clinton for a job in an Obama administration were he to win in 2008 – said, “In a second.”
“There are few more talented people in this country,” said Obama, who also said he would bring on former Vice President Al Gore “in a minute,” citing Gore’s work on climate change and global warming.
Obama and Sen. Clinton have ratcheted up the war of words over their relative experience as the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary draw near.
Bill Clinton is an enormously popular figure among Democratic voters, and while his wife’s rivals have become less cautious about being critical of him, they have generally stayed positive.
Meanwhile, Sen. Clinton in Ankeny, Iowa, yesterday, accused Obama of flinching from the struggle to provide health care for all Americans and said, “I am not afraid of the Republican attacks” on the subject.
“We’ve got to put up a candidate who’s willing to stand up for it and fight for it,” said the former first lady in her most pointed criticism to date of Obama.
“He has called his plan universal, then he has called it ‘virtually universal,’ but it simply does not deserve that label,” she said. “When it comes to truth in labeling, his plan simply flunks the test.”
With Post Wire Services